The offer could convince many merchants to adopt Amazon Pay, the company’s own payment system. The ecommerce giant has showed, once again, its willingness to sacrifice probability for reach.
Swipe fees are a USD 90 billion-a-year business for lenders such as JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup networks including Visa Inc. and Mastercard, and payment processors like First Data and Stripe, which pocket a fraction of every sale when shoppers swipe cards or click “buy now.”
The financial industry’s fees amount to about 2% of a typical credit-card transaction, or 24 cents for debit. However, big retailers like Amazon and Walmart have been able to negotiate lower rates for themselves based on their huge sales volume.
Amazon is offering to pass its discount along to at least some smaller merchants if they agree to embrace its Amazon Pay service, reports Bloomberg citing anonymous sources.
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